‘I lost 90 per cent of my pals after my cancer diagnosis’

Growing numbers of young people are having to discover the isolating reality of cancer ghosting’, as Rachel Clun explains

- Rachel Clun

Being diagnosed with cancer at 24 was something Cengi Sen had prepared himself for, after discovering he had swollen lymph nodes. But he wasn’t prepared for the cancer ghosting” from his friends that followed.

“I did have a few very kind friends who reached out, who kept in frequent contact, but I lost 90 per cent of my friends to my cancer diagnosis,” he told The Independent.

“The pain of losing my friends was in equal difficulty to receiving treatment.”

The treatment itself was tough, not only from the physical impact of chemotherapy but also the emotional toll of having to rely on others for help.

“It’s the dependence that you have to have on others that can be difficult to stomach at times, and the lack of a choice that you have at times as well,” he said.

One in 10 cancer diagnoses in the UK involve people under 50, and cancer in 15- to 24-year-olds is rarer still, making up less than 1 per cent of annual diagnoses according to Cancer Research UK. But the rate of diagnoses among the young is on the rise and experts do not yet know exactly why.

While early-onset diagnoses remain thankfully less common than cancers in older people, the experience of those people getting diagnosed and treated can be difficult.

The government has urged experts and cancer survivors to share their experiences as it creates a new national cancer plan, and health secretary Wes Streeting said he wanted to “make Britain a world leader in saving lives from this deadly disease”.